


At Equal Distance

by inkcharm



Series: Parallel Perpendicular [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, Angst and Humor, Blink and you'll miss it, Coping, F/M, Fade Dream(s), Gen, Het, IDK IT'S WEIRD OKAY, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Light BDSM, Mages, Mass Effect Easter Egg, Not Really Character Death, Other, Self-Esteem Issues, The Fade, Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-05
Updated: 2015-05-05
Packaged: 2018-03-29 04:41:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3882706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkcharm/pseuds/inkcharm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Back then it looked like they were a line, Champion to Inquisitor, and Hawke hadn't known that they both needed to look at a single fixed point, where the lines of their gazes would cross and reveal a Hero at equal distance to them both. They sit together in a triangle, not a circle. She's still hung up about how different and similar they are, the three of them. Sometimes she wonders if they're the same woman, or if they are the same idea at the very least, stretched too thin. An idea no longer needed. Someone must find this incredibly entertaining.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At Equal Distance

They sit together in a triangle, not a circle. It's unclear to her how she knows this, because they're sitting on tree stumps, and there's nothing around them except grass made silver and blue by a moon hanging too close for comfort. But it's a triangle, not a circle. Sharp pillars of light that can only be made cohesive by lines, impossibly so, connecting, but too independant by far to be part of a cycle or something quite as harmonious as that. 

It's eerie, there's no other word for it. 

Truth be told, she'd never really given much thought to how similar they are, not even when she met Lavellan, but maybe that's because back then it looked like they were a line, Champion to Inquisitor, and Hawke hadn't known that they both needed to look at a single fixed point, where the lines of their gazes would cross and reveal a Hero at equal distance to them both. 

Pale, but with pitch black hair, all three of them. Maybe the maker has a very particular type, at least when it comes to women made for breaking and reshaping the world around them, whether they want to or not? And because it's all a massive joke no one's laughing at, they're also all mages, though they could fill an abyss with how they're different in other regards. 

Surana is clad in robes of deepest blue and black and white, and has eyes in so pale a shade that they're more silver than grey. She's a midnight sky, quiet and distant and deadly while she watches, unmoved, as what stands in her path is swept aside by storms and icy mists reflective of what's hidden just below the calm surface. At her behest, the battlefield becomes a terrible and deadly beauty. She stands still when faced with chaos, all the while daggers sworn to her are dancing gleefully and madly in between flashes of lightning and shards of ice, as if there's nothing but delight to be found in that terribly beauty of her powers. Her control is circle trained, and her mostly silent despair is circle trained, as well. She is the moon, sitting on a tree stump on cool grass that sways without a breeze, and if Hawke cared to look, she'd find the sun standing in the distance, not a light for her to reflect, but a light in not so quiet awe of hers. 

In equal distance to both Surana and Hawke sits Lavellan on an identical tree stump. Not proper in her position like Surana is, not deceptively calm and quite and cold. The pale green of her eyes flashes just as the mark on her hand does, proud and daring and curious, made more fierce by the dark, painted lines framing a face as pale as Surana's, but with the black hair partly shaved and partly braided. Daring people to look, instead of daring them not to. Not a thing to be feared, except you'd absolutely rather know it at your side with a dorky smile, than opposite you when a smirk shows the reluctant end of kindness, understanding and diplomacy. Lavellan is wild and free. She moves on the battlefield like water, with a blade of a different sort, preferring to stand in the shade of her mountain moments before she takes on the world, knowing, commanding and needing herself to come out ahead. A force of nature, kind and sweet except for when she's not, always moving to see more, up close, understand it all, know this world and any other while she's at it, only stopping, only slowing down when made to, when an almost unstoppable force meets an almost immovable object. Hawke can see the looming shape out of the corner of her eyes whenever she glances at Lavellan, and wonders if he gentles her restless spirit or vice versa.

Not that she's one to judge. Hawke finds herself plain compared to these two. For all that they're a triangle of interwoven paths, she feels herself in stark contrast to the other two women. Not an elf, for starters, just some human upstart with skin so pale it looks fit for playing at being a noble, certainly, but also with skin that feels too tight at the role she's been cast in. The hair pulled back in a practical knot, except for messy strands she rarely has the patience to shove out of her eyes. And those are bright blue, not as pale or as large and wide and sorrowful as those of her companions. Neither Lavellan nor Surana would do her the injustice of actually telling Hawke she's wrong. Her ears aren't pointed, but her shoulders strain against the same kinds of burdens, different but not so different at all. She likes to get closer than Surana, but doesn't move as close as Lavellan, dodging in the direction she's needed, letting invisible tendrils of gravity do half the work for her. Others might prefer to scatter their enemies, but Hawke has a soft spot for underdogs and figures there's comfort in numbers, so her magic is there to encourage them to stick together, all the better for the ghost she always knows to lurk in the shadows behind her to chip away at what she's pulled together and frozen still, because she's nice like that. Not unlike it takes stubborn chipping at her armor, the one made of smiles and kindness as opposed to metal, to find what's underneath. Both elven mages secretly share the surprise at how well the blind leads the blind leads the blind leads the... Or maybe that's just how it works, when people can't take care of themselves, but only know how to protect, serve, take care of and tend to others, and they do it for one another, the only constellation in which no one's needs get trampled underfoot, even if Hawke would be the first to be utterly surprised at the revelation of why some unlikely things just work like that. 

She's still hung up about how different and similar they are, the three of them. 

„You haven't told us where you've been,“ Lavellan interrupts the silence, and Hawke is glad for it, because she's not sure her usual jokes would leave Surana wounded, or herself in risk of injury. 

Surana glances at both of them. She has a first name, Hawke knows that, but just like Lavellan and Surana, she also knows that when you bear the burden of a title, first names quickly grow too intimate to rest on the tongues of just anyone. And seeing them sitting together like this, she thinks she understands why they don't often hear about Leesya or Marian or Ivoreth. Those are mortal women, and names entrusted to those held dearest, those few who can carry their true weight and know to untangle them from Hero or Champion or Inquisitor. Given names are a safe middle ground. 

The best way to describe Surana's answer, perhaps, is that she shrugs with her eyes, and also says 'Elsewhere' with her eyes more than anything. Hawke's reminded of what she knows of Circles, wonders if that's why Surana rarely makes very sudden movements, and never raises her voice, or if that's just something very inheritently hers, jokes about the calm before a storm or ice queens aside. Pale grey eyes slide to hers, and she deflects with a laugh. 

„Hey, I showed up, I get a free pass on where I was in between.“ 

And perhaps on where she's gone, too, though she can practically feel Lavellan's stare at that. Curiosity will never kill that cat, but Hawke's too good at deflection, and Surana's too good at being quiet. Quite the trio they make like this. 

Overhead the stars glitter and gleam, and they all know they will open their eyes to different skies, far apart, but the threads of a triangle always snatching at the hem of a robe or the blade of a staff or the tip of a braid. 

There's in lump in Hawke's throat, and she hides her attempt to clear it with a chuckle that sounds odd in the stillness of thise clearing. Or meadow. Or... whatever it is they're sitting in. Lavellan asks if she's okay, and Surana gives her a look too heavy with understanding. Hawke wants to be free of them, and even more than that, she wants to crush them to her chest and thell them 'Hey, you massive idiot, I know. Me, too.' And then shove them away and have them laugh it off as drunken antics. Ah, to get drunk with them. To be normal with them. 

For a moment the empty nothing all around them fills with the dim light and horrendous noise of a tavern, and Hawke imagines Surana silent and steadfast until Fenris can't help but grudgingly not loathe her, imagines Lavellan's eyes too bright at Zevran's tales of wild, unlikely adventure, and imagines herself sharing a look with the Iron Bull because clearly they're the only sane ones in a company of elven lunatics. They'd knock politely on Tevinter doors before tearing them down, leaving ash and freedom in their wake, and as they went along they'd find a cure for Surana so her sand would stop trickling away, a home for Lavellan she wasn't bound to by anyone else, though someone else is still allowed to bind her within it, and maybe even closure and peace for Hawke's burdened shoulders. They could do that, together, she's sure of it. 

But when she wakes, she will only remember having crossed paths with Lavellan in those dreadful months far away from her ghost, and barely given her as much contemplation as she should have, and Surana will be a distant legend Hawke's never concerned herself with too much either. Surana will have heard of the Champion from the lips of her sun, and of the Inquisitor because who hasn't heard of her. Lavellan will give little thought to the Circle mage who also happened to be an elf and became a Hero, and occasionally to give a toast to the madwoman of a Champion with her mountain. 

It's a tragedy, really. So naturally, Hawke smiles. 

„You ever think someone has to have a pretty crooked sense of humor?“ 

To their credit, this time both elves say 'You' with their eyes and nothing else. 

„No, I mean... Look at us. Three mages, accidentally stumbling their way up in the world in the losing battle to save people. We even look alike. Kind of.“ 

Lavellan's grin is all teeth and crinkling corners of her eyes, because of course it is. „We were all criminals. You were an apostate refugee throwing in with smugglers, I was an apostate spy who allegedly blew up the Conclave, and she only barely managed not to be an apostate by being a fledgeling conscript who allegedly betrayed their country.“

Yeah, they're all jokes, and someone must find this incredibly entertaining. 

Surana lets the two of them jest, only interrupting with a well placed shake of her head or warm smile when necessary. She's content to let Hawke and Lavellan compare notes on the ways in which they are and aren't similar, because it's what they always do when they forget they already met like this, in the places in between, with the stars watching them as a shepard watches its flock, and Surana thinks that they can't be the only ones, that the sky stretches too wide for them to be the only links. Sometimes she wonders if they're the same woman, or if they are the same idea at the very least, stretched too thin, and therefore doomed to fail either their cause or themselves. Not made for happy endings, just for endings. 

The thought stays with her when Lavellan and Hawke wake and forget the places in between that Surana wanders, restless, while she tries not to heed the call, not to give in to what's in her blood, not to just delay the inevitable, but break free of it. Save herself as she saved so many others, in a mad attempt not to fail those she never wanted to hurt by doing something so utterly pointless as dying young outside of battle to pay a late price for being an idea no longer needed.

In a different corner of the world, Lavellan wakes with her palm aching, the lingering sense of a connection she doesn't understand, and grey eyes she has never seen in anyone's face. On the other end of the line, countless miles away from Skyhold, Hawke wakes with her heart pounding, with the feeling of having failed to hear someone call for help in hopeless, mute despair. She hastily climbs out of bed at the same time Lavellan does, and both of them throw their windows open. They stare at a fixed point at equal distance from them both. 

Where the lines of their gazes cross, they don't see anything except the empty morning sky, and grass slowly regaining color as the sun rises.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this is weird. No, I don't know what the point of it was, really, except I have a desperate, aching need for my three main Dragon Age Ladies and LIs to meet and have adventures and save each other from themselves. And then I made myself sad with this, and I don't even know what this is. Alas.
> 
> Having Lavellan with Bull and not with Solas must be such an unpopular choice, and I apologize for that. I was tempted to go for the egg nerd, I love him dearly, but it turns out he's forever Lavellan's platonic work husband/soul mate/might have been/etc. 
> 
> This is Un-Beta'd, for that also my apologies.


End file.
